


Rogue Ghosts

by Yeomanrand



Category: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Changing Tenses, Gen, Internal Monologue, Mention of team - Freeform, POV Third Person Limited, Past Tense, Present Tense, slice-of-life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>William Brandt is used to living in a roulette wheel of shifting realities.  What goes on inside his quiet mind while watching the ball ricochet, and will he be happy when it lands?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rogue Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



William Brandt stared at Ethan Hunt, shaking his head just a little.

"Me. You want _me_ to stay here and babysit the committee meetings."

"Yeah, Brandt. You'll sit next to the head of the CIA and you'll say 'I can neither confirm nor deny any information regarding an operation without the express consent of the Secretary.'"

"The Secretary's dead, Hunt. You know that as well as I do." They'd both been there, after all. Almost got to die with him. Brandt shivered.

"Right." Ethan's smile was all teeth.

"Which means I can't confirm or deny anything." Brandt rolled his eyes at how obvious it all was.

"And leaves me free to do what I need to do in the field. Like getting myself disavowed."

"Because _that's_ such a good plan. Not that we're not still Ghost Protocol anyway."

Ethan shrugged.

"This is such a bad idea."

"I can't see another. Can you? You're the analyst; sitting behind a computer screen weighing the options and talking to Congressmen should be easy."

"Easy?" Brandt got up, paced to the door and back to the window. "Hitting the field again when the Secretary died was easy. Taking your gun away from you was easy. Hell, jumping into a man-eating computer fan and trusting Benji to catch me was _easy_. This? This is going to be harder than telling you I was responsible for your wife's death."

"Which you weren't."

Brandt shook his head.

"Yeah, okay," he said, "I get it. I gotta. Only option. But wish me luck."

"We're IMF. We don't need luck."

"I don't know. If it weren't for bad luck we wouldn't have any at all."

Ethan laughed.

*****

_Introductions over, Hunt shows him a face drawn on his hand, gives a description. Brandt knows the face and the description, knows the man. He knows every face he's ever seen. He's also not happy about being in Russia but the Secretary ordered. Said he needed his Chief Analyst._

_And now they're in a strange country, all disavowed, and the Secretary is telling Hunt he should escape. That he should assault Brandt and himself. And Brandt is beyond uncomfortable because there's something wrong, there are many things wrong and there's a reason he's out of the field and that reason is_ sitting across the car from him. _He's a desk jockey, a computer jockey and —_

_Tires. Moving too fast. Wrong. Headlights. Wrong. He starts to speak to the Secretary again._

_Explosion. All of them thrown to the floor. Gunfire. Hunt shouting for the driver to drive! The Secretary, despite Brandt's hands on his shoulders and Hunt's warning sitting up, shot, pro-kill single tap to the head from in front of them. Five through Brandt's computer screen into the driver._

_Chaos. Water. He should know what to do, he has training for this but he can't. Breathes in the air pocket, waits for Hunt to make a call, make the call, save their asses._

_He's freezing._

*****

"Director Hunley"

"Agent Brandt."

They shook hands. The handshake wasn't entirely friendly, but for a wonder wasn't a power game, either. Hunley was younger than the Secretary had been, older than Brandt himself. Better looking than both of them, or Brandt thought he probably had been, once. The perfect sort of old white guy to sell a bill of goods to other, older white guys.

The Senators filed in, one after another. They took their seats.

Brandt considered the men in front of him.

He knew how the hearing would go, had to go, was planned to go.

That wouldn't, despite their team leader's confidence, make this any easier. Brandt would rather be doing just about anything but running this particular long con.

*****

_He's still frozen when they drag themselves into the train car, only now the problem is a matter of too many choices rather than not enough. Hunt doesn't know who he was, and nor do Carter or Dunn; they look at him and they see a desk jockey who's never been out in the field, never got his hands dirty, never ran an op and lost, let alone succeeded._

_He makes a quick assessment of his fellow passengers: Carter's used to running her own agents but he thinks she'll take to Hunt's lead well enough if they can get past Moreau; Dunn is fresh in the field but already used to Hunt's leadership style, and Brandt, well...he'll take Dunn's categorization as 'the helper.' The only one out-of-place on this team._

_He doesn't help his image when he accidentally leans against the trigger for the weapons stores during the briefing. He'd be embarrassed but he's too busy being horrified by what they're hearing so he keeps his yap shut and the moment he might confess comes and goes with an order to take only what they'll need._

_And he's starting to thaw when they unload from the train car, makes a conscious choice not to give himself away until the moment is either right or necessary. He can't afford, given their mission, to either be distracted or a distraction._

_Brandt can't tell Hunt he's already failed him._

*****

He didn't flinch when Hunley repeatedly showed the missile striking the edge of the Trans-America tower before crashing into the San Francisco Bay. Not the first time nor the last. He couldn't help himself making sharp comments about the damage caused being in service of protecting the world. Didn't contradict what he couldn't. 

And, as ordered, Brandt repeated: "I can neither confirm nor deny any details about any operation without the permission of the secretary."

Repeated the phrase until he was ready to punch himself in the face just to avoid hearing it one more time.

He was also sure Hunt picked him for this specific task as revenge for both 'the package is on the plane' and '...minutes to door knock.' 

*****

_He knows — he knows Moreau has made him even before anything happens, while he's still looking at the codes they're transmitting perfectly to a guy who actually wants to use them. Knows from the slight pinch between her eyebrows the second time he double-blinks, but he has to get the job done and focuses. He's an IMF agent, damn it, he can get this done._

_But he doesn't catch fire until she orders his kill right in front of him, because she saw the damn contact lens, because double-blinking isn't exactly subtle but they're running with what they have. And then he's just running — adrenaline and a fighting style so drilled into him that even after all this time out of the field he's still faster than Moreau's people, better at anticipating their moves._

_It's his own people he can't anticipate; they needed Moreau, she was an asset, and he's not leading this team but neither is Carter. They had orders. He knows he shouldn't be berating her, he's out of line himself but there's so much fire and death under his skin he can't_ stop _himself, either. Because he goes on about Moreau or he spills everything he can't let loose without jeopardizing whatever's left of their mission._

 _And then Hunt, battered from the window and the sandstorm and the car wreck and a thousand other papercuts comes out of the bath with his weapon drawn. Brandt is still so lit up he can't stop himself from first taking Hunt's gun and then taking Brandt's own weapon_ back _from Hunt because this is who he is, this is what he does._

 _"What kind of analyst has those skills?" Hunt asks him when he comes up facing, gun pointed not at Hunt's head but center body. Carter and Dunn have their guns on Brandt and he knows he could take them if he needed but he doesn't_ want _to so he doesn't answer Hunt's question and he puts the gun down with a little gesture of surrender._

_Later, he explains the truth to Carter and Dunn. What he'd done. How he'd failed. But he's calmer, then._ _Not all his secrets are out in the open. Just enough he can breathe again, when the whirlwind of an IMF op allows for breathing._

*****

"Mr. Brandt. Welcome to the CIA."

He had to remind himself about unfriendly ears, bit back a comment about the bullshit of it all. He was an analyst, he played political games and remembered every person he ever met for the next Secretary's sake — dead or alive — and measured cost vs. benefit. Hunt put him on this assignment because he had the skills and experience. Him. Not Carter, not Dunn — and Brandt knew Dunn was as unhappy as he was about their orders.

As unhappy as he was about Hunt and Carter out in the cold alone. No matter how necessary.

He answered Hunley's demands and insinuations with all the calm of a banked fire. He had no idea where Hunt was. He owed the man nothing. 

For the mission's sake, he believed his own lies. All of them, even the ones Hunley didn't know he was telling.

*****

 _Hunt lays phones out for all of them; Carter and Dunn take theirs unhesitatingly and leave. Brandt gets up and leaves the phone where it is. He's proud of what they did, of his role in it, but he doesn't belong in the field. He knows better; he doesn't trust himself. Carter trusts herself. Dunn trusts himself. Hunt trusts all of them, or will until Brandt tells him about the failed operation that cost Hunt his wife. And yeah, they succeeded this time, and the free world is safe again — hell, the_ whole _world is safe again — but facts are facts._

_Until they aren't facts anymore. Until Ethan Hunt tells him some of his fear is predicated on a lie, on one agent acting against another to protect a third party. It's not the first time Brandt discovers he's been left in the dark on an op, and it won't be the last. They've all got shades and ghosts in their pasts. And in their futures, if they stay in the business._

_Knowing the truth doesn't change everything. Just enough for Brandt to pick up the phone, tap it on the table, and leave Hunt to whoever he's watching. He doesn't have his faith in himself back. The human psyche doesn't mend so easily. But Brandt has two new shadows with which to try again. He knows the costs; the question becomes whether the benefits to Hunt's potential team balance them._

_It's a start._

_Mental wheels turning, he tucks his hands in his pockets and vanishes into the anonymity of a single man, walking away from the pier._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my lovely beta, who knows who she is, and to my recipient for the prompts.


End file.
